This paper investigates the wage-setting behaviour of Irish firms. We place particular emphasis on the use of flexible pay components and examine how these allow firms to deal with shocks requiring a reduction in costs without having to cut base wages. The results presented in this paper are...

The years before the financial crisis saw a dramatic build-up in private debt levels in several countries and this increase was particularly marked in Ireland. In this paper, we look at whether outstanding debt taken out by small and medium sized enterprises in Ireland constrains current...

Ireland is currently dealing with a severe public health crisis from Covid-19, which has substantially reduced social and economic activity. Prior to the onset of the pandemic, the most imminent risk to the strong performance of the Irish economy seemed likely to come from a hard Brexit. This...

This paper maps out the trade relationship in goods between the two largest trading blocs in the global economy - the EU and US. We use detailed product category information to provide an in-depth description of current trade flows between the two markets, with a particular focus on how Irish-US...

In this paper, we use new survey data on the Irish SME population to trace out the impact of the pandemic on firms' revenues, their capacity to adjust their cost base and their usage of policy supports. Between March and October 2020 over 70 per cent of firms experienced some fall in turnover...

As well as their direct effects on output and employment, the attraction of foreign direct investment is sometimes argued to provide further economic benefits through spillover effects that potentially increase the productivity performance of domestic firms. Empirical evidence on these indirect...

This paper uses recently available information on the composition of household assets and liabilities to examine the impact of a tax on household wealth in Ireland under a wide range of assumptions on how such a tax might be designed. We compare results based on models of existing taxes on...

In this paper we examine the elasticity of Irish income taxation revenue with respect to aggregate national output - both GDP and GNP. This enables us to estimate the sensitivity of this key taxation aggregate with respect to changes in economic activity. It also allows us to compare the...